A machine learning-based probabilistic wind speed prediction model with multi-resolution data, quantile regression and bound estimation

Abstract

Wind speed prediction can be important for management of long-span cross-sea bridges, and probabilistic prediction models are needed to take uncertainty of future wind speed into consideration. However, there are two shortcomings of existing models. One is the lack of supplementary input of detailed fluctuations of wind speed, and the other is that fixed quantiles are usually selected when the predicted probability distribution is converted into a confidence interval. To this end, we propose a novel machine learning-based probabilistic model with multi-resolution data, quantile regression and bound estimation. The proposed model is composed of the distribution prediction part and the interval prediction part. In the distribution prediction part, we employ multi-resolution data as input, which can complement details of fluctuations of wind speed to reduce uncertainty. The interval prediction part employs the lower upper bound estimation method to postprocess predicted quantiles and output a superior interval than selecting fixed quantiles. The proposed model is validated on the monitoring wind speed data of two long-span cross-sea bridges, where the superiority of the distribution part and the effectiveness of the interval part are demonstrated.